The passive patient and disclosure of genetic information: Can english tort law protect the relatives' right to know?

Despite the extensive literature on disclosure of genetic information to family members, this area remains topical and attracts scholarly debate. This derives from the general understanding that informing relatives can help them reduce the risk of developing a genetic disease. The scholarly debate in law and bioethics mainly focuses on patients' explicit refusal to inform relatives. However, this article examines the common phenomenon of passive non-disclosure where patients agree to share genetic test results with their relatives in principle but refrain from doing so in practice. Analysing the position of English tort law leads the author to conclude that it can and should impose legal liability on patients to alert relatives that there is genetic information they can pursue. It is suggested that if the goals are to enable family members to avoid harm and make autonomous decisions about health, English tort law should adopt a communitarian position and support the models of communication used in practice by clinicians in genetics.